


With or Without Love

by caerynlae



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Psychopath, Slytherin Harry Potter, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 13:28:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11556156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caerynlae/pseuds/caerynlae
Summary: He loves him even thought he knows that his love will never be returned because as a psychopath he just isn't capable of such a feeling.





	With or Without Love

_A young boy, aged 5, lies shivering in a cupboard that he calls his bedroom. Aching all over, especially his backside, he wishes he were anywhere but here. Fate recognises the sincerity and desperation in this wish. It decides to deal him a different hand._

* * *

He became my brother in all but blood.

I’m still not sure how I ended up in the orphanage. No one does. All I remember is falling asleep in my cupboard and waking up in the front yard of the orphanage the next day. The matron that found me certainly wasn’t happy about it. But once they realised that I couldn’t tell them where I came from, in fact, I didn’t even know my name, they had to keep me. Something about obligation.

If the matron wasn’t happy, the children were even less so. Another mouth that had to be fed with the same meagre rations. Despite that none of the children ever had enough to eat, I still managed to be skinnier and smaller than even some of the younger children.

As such, I was an easy subject for the others to pick on. It didn’t help that my magic, although I did not realise what it was back then, kept healing me by the time the next day started. I never defended myself, being used to it as I was from the previous place I stayed at.

We were outside. I was quite a bit away from the other children who once again had just finished with me. I’m pretty sure this time they broke my leg - I could most certainly not get up, no matter how hard I tried. So I stayed on the floor for the time being.

It slowly got darker. At some point even the matrons realised that the children should get back inside. I knew if I didn’t get up now, chances were high that I had to stay the night out here. Chances were even higher that the temperatures would be freezing once the sun fully disappeared on this already cold autumn night. So I again tried to force myself to get up and, surprisingly, I was able to. Now, I wasn’t completely alright, I still had to walk slowly and everything hurt. But get up I did. Today I realise that any other child from the orphanage would not have been able to do that. Except one other. And he was watching me with sharp, ice blue eyes just then.

It took some more time and a few more cases of my accidental magic showing, before that other boy approached me. He was about 2 years older than me and he surely was nearly as unpopular as me. But while I, at the time, let myself get beaten up without complaint, he had an inner strength that I admired. And the other children were afraid of him. Although I did not understand why back then.

Once he was sure that I seemed to have the same mystery talent as he did, he took me under his wing though. Looking back, this is the only action which I have ever seen him do that seemed to have no immediate or even delayed benefit to him. Or maybe he did already realise that having someone as grateful as I would be, would be a great advantage to him. And that certainly turned out to be true.

He taught me how to stand up for myself. How to be cunning and clever. How to extract revenge and how to enjoy it. He taught me to read and write and how to think. In short, he taught me how to be a force to be reckoned with. He raised me, despite just being two years my senior. He made me who I am.

We found out that we could both speak a language that no one else seemed to understand. That made us feel even more connected, or at least it did for me. As we got older, we started devising plans on how we would get out of this god forsaken place as soon as we could. We were certainly not happy but we were content.

Until the day Tom got a letter delivered by an owl and suddenly everything made so much more sense.

Having no money of our own, Tom had to make do with the pitiful amount provided by the Hogwarts fund. But it was enough to buy him robes that did not make him stick out in a crowd. How he managed to get another pair for myself, I will probably never know. However, he did and so we spend the remainder of that summer travelling to the Wizarding library in London every morning, not returning until late in the evening. The matrons of course didn’t care – it meant two people less to feed. We swore to learn as much as we could and be the best two wizards that ever lived.

Soon it was time for Tom to travel to Hogwarts. The two years I had to spend at the orphanage without him, were the two worst of my life. But I persevered and continued to spend as much time at the library as I could.

Once it was time for me to head to Hogwarts, Tom had already managed to make a name for himself in Slytherin, which is the house I, of course, joined as well. When he first started out, the other students in the house made his life difficult for being a Mudblood. But it didn’t take Tom long to figure out enough curses to make the others back off. Soon after he found out that being a Parselmouth marked him as the descendant of Salazar Slytherin. Tom, being the person he is, used this to his maximum benefit. While it of course did not mean that the older years started respecting a first year, they did leave him be. So, by the time Tom’s third year, my first, started, Tom was already dominating the other third years as well as the year above and below him. It didn’t even take until the second day for the other first years to fall in line as well. Gordon McKinley made the grave error of trying to pick on me for being a Mudblood. Let’s just say Tom was most certainly not pleased and leave it at that. Maybe me telling you that he later ended up being the second person, the first intentionally, that Tom ever killed, gives you an idea though.

As the years continued to pass by, Tom garnered more and more followers. In his fifth year he was without a doubt the King of Slytherin. We both continued to study hard, Tom always patiently helping me if I had any trouble. Tom, naturally, was absolutely perfect in every discipline. But I was no slouch either, although my greatest talents were clearly reserved for Charms and Arithmancy. Both very useful subjects to start creating new spells, which was certainly Tom and my favourite hobby.

In Tom’s sixth year, we found the name of his father. He, including Tom’s grandparents, did not survive the following summer. The older Tom got, the more of an unstoppable force he became. While his aggressiveness and lack of compassion often scared me, there was nothing that I wouldn’t do for Tom – the boy who was there for me when no one else was. Soon we started developing grand plans and we spent hours talking about how we wanted to change the Wizarding world. Tom’s grand dream was to become the Minister of Magic so we could efficiently implement all those plans. The most prominent feature in those plans was certainly our stance against Muggles and Mudbloods. Tom did realise that killing all Muggles would be a hopeless and potentially dangerous endeavour. But he did want to fully separate the two worlds, so that no Wizarding child will ever again have to grow up in the merciless hands of Muggles who hate everyone who is different to them and everything that they do not understand. Initially he wanted to kill off Mudbloods as soon as they were born to ensure full segregation. But for once I was able to persuade him to my side of the argument. I convinced him that their situation was no different to ours and we should merely take them away from their Muggle parents and raise them in Wizarding homes. I think the only thought that convinced him of that idea, was the fact that we actually still did not for sure know if I myself was a Mudblood or not. Although the fact that I could speak Parseltongue made Tom forever argue otherwise.

* * *

Tom Marvolo Riddle, youngest ever Minister of Magic at age 31, storms into the lounge room in our manor house without so much as a Hello.

“Where were you?”, I ask him.

“Out”, he replies with his characteristic smirk.

He loosens his tie and pours himself a glass of whiskey. Then he sits down at the table and pulls the evening editions of Wizarding Britain’s newspapers to himself. I collect the papers I’ve been working on and sort them into the correct order. I had been researching the arithmetic meaning of some obscure dark objects for Tom.

Once done, I walk over and kiss his temple.

“I love you”, I murmur into his ear.

He flips me around, and starts kissing me in this aggressive manner of his.

After a few minutes he draws back and replies “I love you too”, while looking me straight in the eyes.

I can’t help but snort.

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t”, he agrees, as always aware that I know it for the lie it is. He might be the best liar in the world and I’m sure he lied to me before about other subjects. But this lie I see. He finds me interesting, useful to have around and even sexy. He might even love the way I manipulate other people nearly as well as he does – especially of course as it is usually to his benefit. But he does not love me. He is incapable of that. I have long since known that. But it will never change how I feel. He taught me the way of the world. He was the first, and only, person to be truly there for me. And for that I will forever love him.

* * *

Some time later. I’m braced against the wall, my pants pooling around my ankles, Tom pounding into me. I can’t even remember how we ended up here. Who started it. Why.

He is rough, of course. But makes sure that I’m enjoying it at the same time. He knows exactly how to keep me happy. It’s that clever manipulation where he does everything to make me happy because it keeps me attached to him. That’s probably what made me fall in love with him in the first place. Bastard. But now it’s too late to change and I love him. Despite his inability to feel anything for me. Ever.

He is my husband in all but love.

* * *

_Fate did deal him a different hand. But was it a better one? For him? For Wizarding kind?_


End file.
